


GNARGH Means I Love You

by azarias



Category: The Authority
Genre: Humor, M/M, Yuletide 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-25
Updated: 2006-12-25
Packaged: 2017-12-29 16:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azarias/pseuds/azarias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Apollo and Midnighter repair their marriage while fighting fuckzombies in Seattle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	GNARGH Means I Love You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [platoeatssouls](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=platoeatssouls).



> Milkshake Butterfly tried to keep me sane during this. You see what that gets us?

 

 

The next person who started humping that tree, Apollo was going to _let them_. He did not have _time_ to save civilians from splinters in their dicks, and the tree at least wasn't going to be hurt by getting better acquainted. Not unless a horde of them descended on it when they heard good times were being had, and if that happened, well. Somebody had to take one for the team, and he'd prefer if it weren't actually someone _on_ the team. Apollo would fucking plant a sapling when this was over.

Bad time for certain phrases, yes.

This wasn't the way the Authority had planned to come back into the view of the world. The Authority wasn't officially _calling_ itself that yet, and Apollo wasn't one of the ones convinced it was even a good idea to get the band back together now that Bendix was dead. Very dead. In little pieces, none of them contiguous. Dead.

In fact, Jenny was pretty much the only one who _was_ convinced that the team was still viable, and Rose Tattoo and the new Doctor seemed to more or less do what she told them -- Rose doing it with a look on her face that told Apollo he was going to have to have _that talk_ with Jenny a good half-decade earlier than he'd planned. He'd hoped, too, that it would at least involve teenage _boys_ , giving him one half of the equation that he wasn't talking completely out of his ass on.

Of course, that wasn't the only talk he was going to have to have with her, assuming they all got out of this alive and able to look other human beings in the eye. Throwing back together a group of people who'd damned near crashed the world economy the last time they'd had a great idea to save everybody was the dream that his eight/whatever-year-old daughter had had for the last three years. He'd always known that he hadn't explained to her satisfaction why that was a bad idea. And he _should_ have anticipated it biting him in the ass, but there was this thing called _retirement_ and this other thing called _complacency_ , and, hey, it turned out they were a natural pair. So he'd conveniently forgotten that there was a whole, wide, multi-dimensioned universe out there, and that whatever sentience it had _wallowed_ in irony.

He'd decided not to dwell on the last time he'd retired, and what another woman named Jenny had done with that idea. Oh, fucking irony.

He was pretty sure that _this_ Jenny was not responsible for dousing Seattle with ... _whatever the fuck this was_ that had turned every human being in the city center into a zombie.

A tree-humping, door-fucking sex zombie.

Pretty sure.

If she was, she was so very, very grounded. Forever.

No one else had responded to the emergency. No 'heroes,' at least. The National Guard had rushed in in good order, and now there were wandering bands of zombies dressed in fetching urban BDUs and using nightsticks in ways that would've been easier with batteries. Apollo was pretty sure that any capes who'd seen this on the news had quietly turned off their t.v.s, unplugged their phones, and decided to spend the day reading a good book.

Fortunately for this clusterfuck, Jack Hawksmoor with a hangover tended toward impulsive decisions backed up by the kind of charisma you could only have around equally hungover people who'd seen you dancing to "Love Shack" on the kitchen counter the night before. The Authority to the rescue.

Or whatever they were calling themselves. Formerly Known As The Authority. I Can't Believe It's Not The Authority. Even Though We Look Exactly Like It, Believe Us, We're Not the Authority. Apollo had gotten tired of thinking of them as _the guys I'm not conquering a country with again ever. Ever._ Though that was still a good description.

Maybe.

Unless it was a really bad country that --

Fuck.

He hadn't thought he'd gotten out of shape the last few years -- he didn't think it was physically possible for him to _get_ out of shape -- but maybe the uniform was a little tight and was cutting off the flow of blood through his neck. That'd explain the stupid things that kept sneaking into his head. Oxygen deprivation. Yes.

"This is what I came back for. Fucking _figures_."  
Apollo looked over at Midnighter, not startled to see him nearly in arm's reach. Empty handed; he'd evidently learned the lesson about night sticks, and generally about anything long and slender. Apollo shifted his grip on the back of the Ozzfest t-shirt he was holding, getting a good knot of it in his fist before the shirt's reed-thin, skin-headed wearer got loose or tore his nipple piercings on the hem.

"GRRRRRRRRGH!" the metal kid cried, lunging for Midnighter while wriggling in a way that would net him a decent career in modern dance or adult films as soon as he was legal.

"That's not what you said last night," Apollo responded.

"GNNNNRGH?" said the slathering zombie.

"You, not him," Apollo said to Midnighter.

Midnighter grabbed a tangled pair of things on the verge of breaking their own legs. Taking both by the scruff of the neck, he shook them apart, turned them in opposite directions, and gave them a firm shove. One headed for a fire hydrant. The other shambled into a doughnut shop. "Don't remember _you_ saying a whole hell of a lot."

"Well, no," Apollo agreed. "'Shove your tongue farther down my throat' gets kind of hard to say when you're in the middle of _doing_ it." He gave the metal kid a shake to establish who was in charge of the zombie/Apollo relationship. "Though you were managing to give orders pretty well. If _that's_ what it takes to get you to top that enthusiastically, I'll clone Bendi-- look out!"

The metal kid had to be carrying at least five pounds of high-quality surgical steel, much of it honed to respectable, though small and non-lethal, points. He made a decent projectile when Apollo threw him at the herd of burly, leather-clad women who were just a couple of yards past groping distance and making a bee line for Midnighter. They went down in a tumble of "Dykes on Bikes" vests, throwing free a pride flag they had carried like a battlefield standard. The metal kid started to wriggle.

"GNNNEEE-aaah!"

God, that was disgusting.

Apollo breathed heavily, adrenaline hammering his heart. Midnighter stood near enough that Apollo could've leaned on him. He didn't. "You knew they were behind you," Apollo managed after a moment.

"Yeah."

"You wanted to see what I would do."

"Yeah."

"And?"

Nearby, Midnighter's zombie shuffled back out of the doughnut shop carrying at least half a dozen pastries, none of them in its hands. Impressive.

"And you saved me from a metric shit ton of lesbians who were after my ass," Midnighter concluded.

Apollo looked at him and almost smiled. Asshole.

Midnighter shook his head and tossed the pride flag over his shoulder, plucking it from where it had snagged on his coat. "Yeah. Love you, too."

"See, _that's_ what you said last night." Midnighter was in easy reach. Apollo reached, and Midnighter met him halfway.

"I'm not making out with you in the middle of an emergency that's going to be giving Letterman lame-assed monologue material for weeks," Midnighter warned.  
Apollo nodded and kept his eyes on his partner, ignoring events in the background. He'd meant what he said about the next guy to try a pickup line on the tree. "Shut up and do property damage with me."

The corners of Midnighter's mouth twitched. Just a furtive little tug of the lips before he could quiet them. Win.

"Sounds like a plan. Put my coat on," Midnighter ordered, shrugging out of it. "That shiny ass of yours is going to draw these things and blind the rest of us."

"And yet you're the one they've been trying to feel up," Apollo said even as he pulled the heavy coat on. Important parts of him did feel less vulnerable that way.

"Leather. Zombies are fucking kinky, all right?"

"Who knew?"

 

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time ...
> 
> Okay, seven _years_ ago when I wrote this, holy fuckballs, this was going to be the first of five fractured tropes that got Apollo and Midnighter back together in the aftermath of The Authority: Revolution. This one, though it's not entirely clear, is sex pollen. (It began life as a tortured joke about Starbucks that I just couldn't bring myself to carry through.) Other entries would've included annoying soulbonds via broken radiotelepathic implants, and homophobic coworkers who are aliens making them do it. Ah, well.
> 
> The lesbian joke is a reflection of my sexual feelings for Midnighter's coat. I like to think he would hand it over in the name of queer solidarity.


End file.
